Posts [ 18 ]

Topic: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

Has anyone tried the Aptana IDE? According to them, it is a "robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications." And since it is an Eclipse-based IDE it apparently plays nicely with RadRails. You can add RadRails as a plug in for Aptana giving yourself a Rails IDE that excels at javascript as well.

Re: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

I have used it.

A couple thoughts:

1 - It's got nothing but potential. Honestly this is THE editor for HTML, but not yet.

2 - It crashes in OS X constantly. I use RADRails without issue for my RoR work and it does not crash on me ever so I know I can run eclipse just fine. It seems like there is an issue with code completion, beause it seems like in some cases when the code completion dialog pops up thats when it crashes. It actually locks, and the error message is that the script took too long to execute.

That said...I'm keeping a close eye on this tool because it seems very very slick.

Re: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

I've tried it and like what I've seen so far.

I've been using it for about a week and did encounter one hiccup where a project file locked up (wouldn't allow me to open it) as the result of a file copy/file paste in which the source file contained a syntax error - I had edit the file in notepad to correct the error and then all was OK.

It appears to have a lot of potential as an IDE - I've kept my original Radrails setup until such time as I'm convinced there aren't any serious issues - Aptana has announced that they've also picked up RDT (Ruby Development Tools) to be included in the IDE.

Re: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

It is nice before it integrated with Aptana. after it integrated with aptana I get no chance to tried it at home (I dont have good internet to download radrails, since aptana doesnt bundle it with rails ... [ it is actually aptana + radrails_url not real radrails lol])I couldnt find radrails file for eclipse as well although it mentioned there.

Re: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

Someone needs to write a textmate binding (for shortcuts) for Aptana I love it, but its cluttered, and the shortcuts are not that intuitive.

A lot of the defaults do not make sense, but boy it has potential. Its very stable, it has a boat of features that mostly seem to work.

My biggest issues are

1. I found it difficult to get it to work with cygwin 2. Weird key bindings. I'm used to ctrl-shft-f for a global search, I'm used to having ctrl-tab and ctrl-shft-tab to change tabs, etc ... 3. It's very in-your-face out of the box, selecting a word will highlight all appearances of the word in your document. 4. I really need to reorganize my workspace, I want it to look like visual studio.5. Its hard to edit the out of the box settings, I find the configuration menu very complex.

Re: Anyone tried the Aptana IDE?

I have, the free version. (I haven't upgraded and I haven't even bothered to install the trial version of the commercial version).

sambo99 wrote:

Someone needs to write a textmate binding (for shortcuts) for Aptana I love it, but its cluttered, and the shortcuts are not that intuitive.

textmate binding for Eclipse Aptana?

You know, Eclipse will let you rewrite your shortcuts anyway you want them. You can even save your preferences/configuration and share them with other developers.

sambo99 wrote:

A lot of the defaults do not make sense, but boy it has potential. Its very stable, it has a boat of features that mostly seem to work.

I agree.

sambo99 wrote:

My biggest issues are

1. I found it difficult to get it to work with cygwin

I basically gave up on Cygwin.

It has limitations, even with rails.

sambo99 wrote:

2. Weird key bindings. I'm used to ctrl-shft-f for a global search, I'm used to having ctrl-tab and ctrl-shft-tab to change tabs, etc ...

Agreed, but you can reconfigure every single one of those. Thought, setting a shortcut only once may not be sufficient, you may have to set the same shortcut for each pane you usually use (if there is a way to set a shortcut globally, I haven't found it yet -- may be there is now).

sambo99 wrote:

3. It's very in-your-face out of the box, selecting a word will highlight all appearances of the word in your document.

You can turn that off.

Any little thing, you can enable or disable at the granular level.

sambo99 wrote:

4. I really need to reorganize my workspace, I want it to look like visual studio.

To each his own.

On that topic, you may want to install one of those Eclipse database plugins for browsing your database within Eclipse (thought, the last time I checked -- it wasn't as nicely integrated as Visual Studio for SQL Server)

sambo99 wrote:

5. Its hard to edit the out of the box settings,

Actually, if you're willing to give up on the idea of using cygwin, it should work pretty much out of the box.

sambo99 wrote:

I find the configuration menu very complex.

Yes, they are.

Note that the configuration menus for different things are located in different places, making the entire thing very confusing.

I wish I could help you more by giving you more precise advice, but I haven't fully mastered the Eclipse interface myself yet -- I still just keep feeling my way around.

But I recommend you pick up a book or two on Eclipse configurations, and every week or so, study a chapter, and find ways to integrate what you've learned in that chapter that following week. That's pretty much the way I'm doing it now.

I find Eclipse an incredibly useful tool -- the more I learn about it.